Frank Morrison Spillane, better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, whose stories often feature his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. Spillane was also an occasional actor, once even playing Hammer himself in the 1965 film The Girl Hunters.
John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn.
A paperback book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.
Ronald Joseph Goulart ( ) was an American popular culture historian and mystery, fantasy and science fiction author.
Edward Dentinger Hoch was an American writer of detective fiction. Although he wrote several novels, he was primarily known for his vast output of over 950 short stories. He was one of the few America fiction writers of his generation who supported himself financially through short story publication, rather than novels or screenplays.
Michael Francis Gilbert was an English solicitor and author of crime fiction.
The Detection Club was formed in 1930 by a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Arthur Morrison, Hugh Walpole, John Rhode, Jessie Rickard, Baroness Emma Orczy, R. Austin Freeman, G. D. H. Cole, Margaret Cole, E. C. Bentley, Henry Wade, Constance Lindsay Taylor and H. C. Bailey. Anthony Berkeley was instrumental in setting up the club, and the first president was G. K. Chesterton. There is a fanciful initiation ritual with an oath written by Sayers, and the club hold regular dinner meetings in London.
The Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library was a series of trade paperback books published in the United States by the Newcastle Publishing Company between 1973 and 1980. Presumably under the inspiration of the earlier example set by the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, the series reissued a number of works of fantasy literature that had largely been forgotten, being out of print or otherwise not easily available in the United States, in durable, illustrated trade paperback form with new introductions. For a number of works the Library’s editions constituted the first U.S. or first paperback edition. Together with the earlier series from Ballantine Books, it contributed to the renaissance of interest in the fantasy genre of the 1970s.
William Theodore Link was an American film and television screenwriter and producer who often worked in collaboration with Richard Levinson.
Peter (Harmer) Lovesey, also known by his pen name Peter Lear, is a British writer of historical and contemporary detective novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian-era police detective based in London, and Peter Diamond, a modern-day police detective in Bath.
Phyllis Eleanor Bentley was an English novelist.
William Louis DeAndrea was an American mystery writer and columnist.
Mignon Good Eberhart was an American author of mystery novels. She had one of the longest careers among major American mystery writers.
Joseph Commings was an American writer of locked room mysteries. He wrote a series of soft-core sex novels, but is best known for his locked-room mystery/impossible crime short stories featuring Senator Brooks U. Banner."
James Powell is a Canadian author of mystery and humorous short stories. Many of his 130 stories have been published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He has been nominated twice for the Crime Writers of Canada Award for the Best Short Story and, in 1989, won the Ellery Queen Readers' Award for the story "A Dirge for Clowntown" featuring Inspector Bozo of the Clowntown Police. Powell's occasionally dark sense of humor and developed irony has led to him being noted by Marvin Lachman as "The S.J. Perelman of the mystery story...outrageous, hilarious satires, international crime and surprise endings."
Marcia Muller is an American author of mystery and thriller novels.
Jeffrey Marks is an American author.
Douglas G. Greene is an American historian, editor, and author. He is the son of Margaret Chindahl Greene and the Reverend George L. Greene, He is married to Sandi Greene with whom he has a son, Eric and a daughter, Katherine, and has an identical twin, David L. Greene, and a younger brother Paul.
The Curious Conspiracy is a collection of mystery stories by the British thriller writer Michael Gilbert, first published in 2002 by the American company Crippen & Landru and then in England. Published to recognize Gilbert's 90th birthday, it contains 20 previously uncollected stories, as well as a brief introduction by Gilbert himself and an appendix for Sources. Gilbert, who was appointed CBE in 1980, was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers' Association. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1988 and in 1990 he was presented Bouchercon's Lifetime Achievement Award. Four of the stories in this collection feature two of Gilbert's many recurring characters that he created throughout his long career of writing both novels and short stories. Gilbert's introduction says that the topics covered by the stories are "catholic", in the sense of being "of universal human interest; touching the needs, interests or sympathies of all men." The locales vary from London to a Red Sea sheikdom and the time frame from the present day back to the Peninsular War. Some of them, such as "Judith", have an unexpected grimness about them. "Michael was an exceptionally fine storyteller, but he's hard to classify," said one of his British publishers after his death. "He's not a hard-boiled writer in the classic sense, but there is a hard edge to him, a feeling within his work that not all of society is rational, that virtue is not always rewarded.".
The Price of Love (2009) is the second collection of short stories by Peter Robinson; stories previously published in crime anthologies and magazines. They include an Inspector Banks novella and three Inspector Banks short stories. Canadian detective fiction writer Robinson is the author of the Inspector Banks series. Eleven stories, subtitled Eleven ways to pay with your life.
